


Bathroom Floors

by sotakeabitofcalpol



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Brief Mention of Blood, Heavy Angst, I read old pathology books, Kinda, Songfic, TW: Vomiting, failed rescues, tw: death, tw:gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 08:07:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20005045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sotakeabitofcalpol/pseuds/sotakeabitofcalpol
Summary: They’d been too late, too late to save anyone, and now Alan is locked in his bathroom.Fairly graphic. Very angsty. Please, don’t read if it might trigger you.





	Bathroom Floors

Alan is slumped half against the wall and the bathroom floor when John finally manages to pick the lock on the door, and he looks like utter shit. 

He knows that look. When a mission goes wrong. He’s seen it a lot, in his brothers’ eyes. Mostly in his own. But this isn’t about him.

So he sits next to Alan as he retches into the toilet, rubs his back at all the right times as nothing comes up. Today...

Today wasn’t great.

Alan finally collapses onto him, burying himself in the sweater that’s really Scott’s, but John has borrowed, like he had when they were kids and mum had died. Except this time Alan’s seen the body. Alan’s seen more bodies than there should have been up there.

Something twisted? Apathetic? Reminds him of the story he’d read, about a terrorist attack in Bali in the early part of the century, about how they’d covered the bodies in shop bought ice to try and stop them from rotting even though they still did, and how glad he is that they were in space and the bodies weren’t rotting when Alan had got there.

What’s left of his empathy reminds him that this isn’t going to help Alan.

So he listens as Alan pours out the horror of today between sobs, because that’s his job. To listen. To listen to know when to send his brothers. To listen to help. To listen to screams when everything has gone to shit and the first two have failed.

And again that part of his brain, sounding suspiciously like his mother, reminds him that he’s supposed to be helping Alan.

Alan’s frantic tirades have calmed down to something which cuts him to the bone.  
“Is that what mum looked like? In the snow? Was it like what happened up there?”  
His logic is telling him no, that the deaths are so different. But he’s seen both types, and they’re both mixing horribly in his head and he can’t remember which is which.  
“Death never looks the same two times. I...don’t know how to answer that.”  
Alan doesn’t seem to even hear his answer, panicked mind racing ahead.  
“I never saw her. Did you?”  
Yes he did. Him and Virgil saw the moment death took her, freezing with her after that avalanche. Except they’d survived, because they hadn’t been bleeding out. But he can’t tell him that. He doesn’t know.

All he can think to do is what he’d done all those years ago, the last time his little brother had been huddled into him crying. He sings.

“She asked me son when I grow old  
Will you buy me a house of gold?  
And when your father turns to stone  
Will you take care of me?”

He’s not really sung since they were kids. Even then, he only sung in front of Alan. Alan didn’t want to make him do it in front of others. He’s not even sure if Alan can hear him through the shock. But he keeps singing.

“I will make you queen  
Of everything you see  
I’ll put you on the map  
I’ll cure you of disease”

“Let’s say we up and left this town  
And turned our future upside down  
We’ll make-pretend that you and me  
Lived ever after happily”

Alan is singing along quietly from his lap, but all he can think is God, this can’t be what makes him break. It’s probably too late, given the tears running down his face.

“And since we know that dreams are dead  
And life turns plans up on their head  
I will plan to be a bum  
So I just might become someone”

In a minute they’ll have to get up. There’s still bile in the toilet, and Alan has two hastily bandaged ribs from a previous rescue, and he needs to get out of his space suit, instead of chucking this jumper over it, but for now they are together. They are crying together.

“I will make you queen  
Of everything you see  
I’ll put you on the map  
I’ll cure you of disease”

The last words are whispered as the two collect themselves, and wipe their tears away. Then they’ll be international rescue again, not two broken boys on the bathroom floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. Jeesh. I don’t know why I wrote that.
> 
> The song is House of Gold by Twenty One Pilots. I picked it because I sing it to my brothers as a lullaby.
> 
> The Bali terror attack was a real thing, and they really didn’t have enough cool areas for the bodies, so they put them in the shade and covered them in bags of ice. That fun fact is from Unnatural Causes by Dr Richard Shepard.
> 
> So now I write Thunderbirds fanfic. Enjoy, and stay safe heathens.


End file.
